העט הוא לטעון את ההתפתחות הבאה של העט - עט ללא דיו. לרבים, עם זאת, זה צעד אחד רחוק מדי, lacking the tactility of pen on paper and ditching the best thing about a ballpoint pen: it can write just about anywhere without any special equipment.

The Pen 2.0

The LED indicates when the pen is on, charging, connected to a smartphone or tablet or when ready to pair with a new device.צילום: סמואל גיבס לגרדיאן

The Livescribe system, of which the Smartpen 3 is the third generation, is a halfway house that’s potentially more useful than either a stylus or a pen.

What you’ve got is a pen that looks and feels like a pen, writes on paper with a ballpoint tip and ink, just like any other biro, but it also digitises your scrawls on the page. What you write on paper is exactly replicated in a digital form, without the need to photograph or scan the page.

How does it work?

The camera in the end of the pen, with the ballpoint sticking out above.צילום: סמואל גיבס לגרדיאן

A camera in the end of the pen recognises tiny dot patterns on the pages of special Livescribe paper to track motion. It means it won’t work on any old paper, although as a pen it obviously does, but Livescribe-compatible paper is available in various forms, notepads and Moleskine books, or you can print your own using a laser printer.

The notes are synced to the Livescribe+ app on Android or iOS smartphone or tablet via Bluetooth, but the pen works and records notes just fine on its own, meaning you don’t have to have it connected to your smartphone all the time to work.

Captured notes can be output line-by-line as images, as an image of the page or as a PDF and shared via any app or service you have installed on your smartphone or tablet.

Notes from page to screen.צילום: סמואל גיבס לגרדיאן

The app also has a trick up its sleeve in the form of so-called Pencasts: audio recordings bound to your pen strokes. The app records sound via the smartphone or tablet’s built-in microphone, or an external mic plugged into the headphones socket. The app is not able to record phone calls made on the device running the app, but can use a pick-up microphone to record from another phone.

Audio is then timestamped to your handwriting, meaning that you can playback precisely what was being recorded at the time you wrote a particular word just by tapping on it. It makes transcribing interviews or meeting notes so much faster by getting to the right point in the recording instantly. It’s fantastic.

Pencasts can be played back using the app or via a PDF with the audio embedded within it. To do so you need to load the PDF into Livescribe’s Player – a web app – which is a bit of a faff, but it means anyone can play back a shared PDF even if they don’t own a Livescribe pen.

Pencasts can be played back within the Livescribe+ app or in a browser. The green ink writes over the greyed-out words as the recorded audio reaches that point. Tapping on any word skips to that point in the recording.צילום: סמואל גיבס לגרדיאן

Livescribe also does handwriting recognition. Its success depends on how bad your handwriting is. It will recognise mine pretty accurately when I concentrate and write neatly. עם זאת, it starts to struggle as my handwriting scrawls when writing at speed, which I normally am when interviewing someone.

Differences between iOS and Android

The Android app is a poor relative of the iOS app, crucially missing an automatic send feature, which allows users to effectively sync their Livescribe notes with a notebook in Evernote. You can send notes in the form of images, PDFs or Pencasts to Evernote from the Livescribe Android app, but you have to do it manually.

It’s also worth noting that notes are synced between different devices running the Livescribe+ app, but not Pencasts, which are tied to the device they were recorded on unless shared via other means.

Exploding pens

This is the second version of the Smartpen 3 I have tested. הראשון, the Moleskin edition, died after overheating. I charged it using a Qualcomm Quick Charge compatible USB charger (the pen does not come with its own power adapter), which was fine.

I put it in my bag and went to a meeting, but when I pulled it out to use it 30 minutes later it was unresponsive and too hot to handle. קצת יותר 30 minutes later it had cooled off, but was completely dead.

תצפיות

The control and dot pattern of the Moleskin Livescribe notebook.צילום: סמואל גיבס לגרדיאן

Controls for pairing the pen, recording, pausing and stopping Pencasts, as well as starring, flagging or labelling notes are drawn as icons on the notepad pages – tap them with the pen to use them

The non-pen end is a capacitive stylus, hiding the microUSB port, but it doesn’t stay in the end very securely

Sketches with the pen work just as well as written notes – artistic talent required

מחיר

Livescribe Smartpen 3 comes in various different models, including a new revised Black edition with a better weight distribution and slightly slimmer build. Livescribe Smartpen 3 Black Edition costs £120 and comes with a small refill-style 50-sheet notepad and one ballpoint refill.

Livescribe-compatible notepads start at around £3 each and refills for the pen, £1 each.

But for speeding up the digitising of notes I can’t fault it. The pen perfectly replicates my scrawls, and when exported to Evernote it means I have a duplicate of my notes wherever I am. The Pencasts also speed up transcription no end. The pen is a decent writing instrument, particularly the Black Edition which feels more like a large pen with good weight distribution.

It will always have niche appeal but for anyone who makes notes, particularly while recording audio, it is an excellent tool.

Pros: Digital notes from paper, feels like a pen, writes like a pen, cross-platform, syncs audio to written notes, works without being attached to a phone, many sources of compatible paper, זיהוי כתב יד

חסרונות: Android app not very developed, יקר, requires special paper, first pen failed